312 Proceedings of Boyal Society of Edinhurgh. [sess. 
female, if impregnation were to be effected immediately after 
exuviation. 
A point that, I think, has hitherto escaped notice is that the 
sperms that are found in the vasa deferentia of the male crab are 
never free, but always in packets, which may be either globular or 
elongated and bolster-like. Usually I have found the milt contained 
in the receptacula seminis of females to consist of a paste of free 
sperms. 
From crabs kept in confinement I have learned nothing as to 
the milting process ; but several facts as to the time and mode of 
spawning have been established. In the middle of December 1891 
a Cresswell fisherman found that eight out of about thirty crabs 
that had been left in his crab-store for nearly a month had become 
berried since he put them in. In lllovember 1892 another Cress- 
well man put forty or fifty crabs into a hully ; and after a few days, 
on taking them out, he found that two of them had new spawn on 
them. In December of the same year I myself put a number of 
crabs into a hully, and on the 16th of January 1893 I found that 
one of them had been berried for some time, and another was in 
the act of spawning. Lying on its back, with the flap well raised, 
it had a pool of spawn between its walking legs, and into this it 
plunged, time after time, the endopodites of the anterior abdominal 
appendages, which were then moved to and fro, so as to distribute 
a share of the semi-fluid mass to the other abdominal appendages. 
A considerable quantity of the extruded spawn lay on the floor of 
the hully, and was washed away by the next tide. 
Again, on last Christmas day, four of a number of crabs that were 
being kept for me at Beadnell were found to have become berried. 
I have not been able to ascertain how long the berries are carried 
by the mother crab. Various attempts have been made to keep the 
crabs that have become berried in confinement, but have failed; 
and as the conditions were far from natural, this is not surprising : 
one could not expect successful hatching in hullies that were dry 
for two or three hours every tide. In June of last year, and again 
in August, the ova of some crabs that had been found in spawn 
some time previously hatched out. 
Little is known about the habits of the berried crabs. That they 
do not feed much is made probable by the small number that are 
